With the end of NASA’s space shuttle program, it’s the right time for Americans to reassess their opinions about future spaceflights and space exploration, including lunar missions.

Amid a burgeoning national debt and other priorities, like fixing crumbling infrastructure and finding alternatives to America’s dependence on foreign oil, it’s easy for some people to argue that the space program should be greatly curtailed, if not eliminated.

But others will embrace a view that is in America’s better interests — that investing in new NASA programs for commerical spaceflight and exploration could pave the way for scientific and technological — even medical — advances.

Indeed, America’s space program, while now on the ground, must continue to work toward the day when new space vehicles and missions — such as to the planet Mars — are ready to launch, not merely to dream about.

In that regard, it’s a good time to reflect on a message delivered last week after space shuttle Atlantis and its four astronauts touched down, brining the shuttle program to a close.

That message, from Marion C. Blakey, president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Industries Association, called for American tax dollars to be used for this nation’s space program, rather than Russia’s.

“(With the retirement of the shuttles) the United States now runs the risk of becoming a supplicant,” Blakey said. “We will have no choice but to pay the Russians $60 million a seat to send a U.S. astronaut to the International Space Station.”

“The things that we’ve done have set us up for exploration of the future,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., a former shuttle commander.

But a big question is whether America will remain committed to the next major space goals listed by President Barack Obama — a trip to an asteroid by 2025 and a Mars mission in the mid-2030s — after Obama rejected former President George W. Bush’s proposal for a new round of lunar exploration.

In the long interval between now and the next large-scale endeavors, America must be content with its pride over the shuttles’ impacts regarding the Hubble Space Telescope and the building of the space station, the world’s largest orbiting structure.

With those accomplishments in mind, Atlantis’ commander on its final journey, Christopher Ferguson, rightly observed upon completion of the final mission, “The space shuttle has changed the way we view the world and it’s changed the way we view our universe.”

Those old enough to remember the Russians’ launching of the first earth satellite, Sputnik I, in 1957, recall the urgency the United States placed on catching up to — and surpassing — the then-Soviet Union’s accomplishment. This country did that and much more over the nearly 54 years since the Soviets’ Sputnik achievement.

Now there’s the unknown as to what Russia will achieve while America has its feet on the ground — including the prospect of advancements in terms of space-based national security.

Contrary to the opinion of naysayers, the shuttle program and those space programs that preceded it have been good for America, as will be those programs that follow it.

The danger is that the upcoming interval might dull the determination that has guided the United States’ space efforts for more than half a century.

The right decision — to allow America to move forward in space exploration — must be advanced.